Windows script host (cscript) allows you to execute js files in addition to vbscript (vbs). This is particularly useful in extending the functionality of batch files. This can be useful in a lot of circumstances build process, installation etc.
From my experience the general perception about software engineers seems to be that we are some sort of fancy accountants, number crunching all day. Although basic Math skills is very much a fundamental requirement to write software, people don't seem to realize there is a lot more to it.
Another reason I people bring up is that they would rather not sit all day in front of a computer, as they would rather have a job where they could socialize more. Although, I have never understood as to why someone would want it.
There is more to this than what meets the eye. First most of these bureaucrats are underpaid by the government. They can hardly make ends meet, especially so when they have to feed a family of five or six and educate their children. Schools, colleges aren't cheap anymore in India. If you need good education you got to pay up large amounts of money. The government doesn't have any good investment plans for their employees to save for these things.
Traditionally, although this is changing with the current generation, it is only the male that works in the family. In terms of economics this just doesn't work for a family anymore in the cities.
It is extremely unlikely that these people can work a second job. In some cases the government itself has laws that would prevent them from doing so.
I am not trying to defend bribery. Fixing it is not going to be as easy as hanging bureaucrats. If that were the case most elected representatives wouldn't be alive. There is no easy solution. What the article describes is good for the newspaper but not a viable solution to the problem which ingrained very deeply in the society.
I use Wells Fargo, Business Account. When I started the account I asked them to waive the account minimum fee and that's the only way they were going to get my business and they waived it. There have been times when I had a low account balance and they didn't charge me anything. When you are opening the account it pays to understands these charges and negotiate with them they usually listen.
I use Grooveshark and I agree that the autoplay is very naive compared to Pandora. A better autoplay algorithm will definitely help but it is hard give you feedback unless we know what you are trying to do with the new algorithm. Currently, correct me if am wrong, your algorithm for recommendation is heavily biased toward genre. It is really hard to discover new songs that I like with it and that's when I fall back to Pandora.
Actually they will be helping Microsoft run their Office Online App on IE6 which is not on the list of supported browsers but Safari is, which is webkit based. So they may end up giving an incentive for IE6 users not to upgrade but just install this plugin.
Actually I have used them for business cards. You don't have to get the glossy cards, we didn't. We didn't use any of their templates but created our own and the results were good. The only issue was shipping, it takes a while. Also they don't do weekend shipping.
With shipping calculation there is usually two options you can use FedEx or UPS provided standard size boxes or you can use your own boxes. The latter option is what you are looking at for your problem. The bare minimum information you need about the shipping item is weight. FedEx and UPS both return your rates if you give their API the weight and addresses.
As for calculating the number boxes you will need to do that based on how your warehouse is gonna ship these products. This is the hardest part. Most people usually maintain the dimensions of the actual product. Based on this and how you plan to ship them you will need to figure the number of boxes. The shipping rates that you have negotiated with UPS/FedEx is usually a little lower than what the user will see, so this more often than not should cover your extra costs that you may incur.
Although calculating the number of boxes and their dimension is a little involved it gives you more accuracy. Which is better for you and your customer.
There is no official support for Linux, you will need to use moonlight. Until 3.0 font rendering was a major issue, hence NYTimes switched Adobe Air. Creating a stand alone app is harder compared to Air wasn't even possible in Silverlight 2. It still doesn't have printing capabilities even in version 3.
The bright spot of using Silverlight is the programming language, you can code in C# or F#. But considering that you will need to host the solution on a Windows makes it a more expensive to scale. That probably drives away a lot of startups.